Is Google.com your company's real home page?

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang thinks so.

I'm not convinced though - his hypothesis only holds water when people use Google to look for a company. So if 50-60% of the web traffic to your company's site comes via Google (as ours does) then it's a fair point - but only for that proportion. You can pretty much guarantee that the first page of search results for your brand name on Google will shape someone's perception about your company - the job of your web site is then to either reinforce or attempt to change that perception.

I have been banging on for some time now about the need for companies to invest as much attention - and budget - on the 99.999999% of the Internet that they don't control as the remaining 0.000001% that they do (i.e. their website).

The examples in Jeremiah's post simply serve to reinforce that view.

Published 15 July 2008 10:22 by Niall Cook

Filed under: Marketing Technology, Reputation, Google

Comments

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  Stephen Waddington said:

  Hi Niall, Wholly agree. The really interesting think is to watch children. My 7 and 9 year old never ever use URLs. They access everything via Google, even web sites that they use regularly such as Gmail, Miniclip and YouTube. All the best, Stephen

  July 15, 2008 10:41
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  Niall Cook said:

  Thanks Stephen. At some focus groups, I remember watching grown adults (who surely should know better) typing the URL itself into the Google search box, then clicking on the first result, rather than just typing it directly into the browser address bar. Nowt so funny as folk, eh?

  July 15, 2008 10:46
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  Parker said:

  Great addition to the "Is Google your homepage?" argument, Niall.

  Your comment about the website's job being to reinforce or change your visitor's first impression from the search engine results page was spot on.

  July 15, 2008 14:24